Antithesis
by CoryphaeusRex
Summary: White really only has one problem, and Sable's the only one who can fix it. SablexWhite, obviously. Rated for slash, language and violence.
1. Tarnish

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Good Omens, I don't own Sable or White or **any** Apocalyptic Horsepersons. However, Tim and Jerry Malone, along with Evie, are mine. **All** mine. Which means I can make them do **whatever** I want them to do. Not that I can't do the same with Sable and White, but hey. This **may** be OOC, but then, who knows what the Horsepersons are **really** like, aside from their powers and their individual neuroses. And therefore, this **may not** be OOC. Plot. Yeah... plot. There is a plot. Somewhere deep within this. Either that or it's just a gigantic PWP. An **epic** PWP. The One PWP To Rule Them All, etc. Which has a **very** vague plot. White really only has one problem, and Sable's the only one who can fix it **just** right. Read it and weep. Or whoop. Whichever suits.

They say gold doesn't corrode. GCSE Chemistry should have taught you that. Won't rust, won't chemically combine with anything, won't dissolve unless you have some super-powerful killer acid, very long tongs, and goggles. Platinum's even worse. They say nothing combines with platinum chemically.

Just for your information, they've been telling you wrong.

Try putting platinum into the presence of all the pollution there's ever been, concentrated into one 5'11" slender, long-haired body. More accurately, try putting a platinum ring onto the ring finger of the aforementioned body.

And watch it turn black.

Watch the sleek silver of that platinum ring slowly tarnish, an oil-spill on the silver-lit Pacific, all beautiful purples and greens, never the same colour, different from every angle you try. It's a bruise. Watch it change into this multi-coloured compound, Platinum Something-ite, unnamed, unknown, both repulsive and beautiful at the same time. If it was food you'd choke on it, but it'd taste _so_ good you wouldn't care. Are you still watching? Then watch the greasy, swirling surface reveal the reflection of two bored eyes, so pale grey as to almost be white.

Shiver as you see behind them.

White slipped the platinum ring from his finger, admiring the bruise-like colour that had flooded its pure surface. With a laugh, he tossed it up into the air and skilfully swept it back into his fist as it fell. He couldn't leave anything the way he'd found it, could he? Everything White came across would be changed somehow, moulded to his liking, altered _just_ to make it satisfactory to him. It wasn't deliberate. Honest. His very presence could wilt flowers and give children asthma- did he really need to work at it? White liked to think he was the best of the Horsepersons at doing his job.

Or at least, second best.

That was one thing White didn't like tarnishing. His reputation. Everyone knew Pale was the best of the Horsemen by far - working tirelessly for over six thousand years, never taking a day off. Even Red, working through Christmas most years, liked to take time off on occasion. But not Pale. Omnipresent, practically omniscient, Pale was creepy. Even by normal Horseperson standards, White could admit without an ounce of shame that Pale and his telepathy gave him the creeps.

Could being the operative word.

White was quite proud that nothing fazed him, and therefore he would never actually admit to being freaked out by Pale. Red, or whatever she was calling herself these days, would never let him live it down. He had already fought his way out of the 'baby of the group' teasing that Red had inflicted upon him for a hundred years or so- he was _not_ going to volunteer for that again.

He slipped down from his perch atop the big drum labelled 'DANGER: HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCE' in seven different languages, and stretched. From nowhere, he produced a cigarette and, finding himself without a lighter, glared at it until it lit itself. Letting the tobacco smoke fill his black lungs, he smiled, and, holding the cigarette at arms' length, looked at it.

The cigarette had been a collaboration between him and Sable. White's aim had been air pollution, the ubiquitous litter caused by cigarette butts, and the carefully nurtured, beautiful blasphemy that was lung cancer. Sable had just wanted something to make people skinny. That was Sable's aim in everything, to make things _thinner_. Thinner and unhealthier. Unhealthier and thinner, until, ultimately, they had been delivered unto Death.

Sable approved of White. And White knew it. He would help out, decreasing crop production for Sable, and in return, with a thin smile (was _everything_ he did narrow in some way?), Sable would help out with White's problem.

White really only had one problem.

He was too damn perfect for his own good.

Even though he had the _aura_, the _presence_ of something unclean, the look wasn't really up to scratch. White was flawless. His white hair flowed dead-straight down his back, and no matter how many weeks he went without washing it, it would remain as it had started- white. The eyes were the same. He'd _tried_ to contract conjunctivitis, had lost enough sleep to warrant suitcases under his eyes, but no- he spent so much time distributing his toxins that he had none left to mar himself with. His skin was perfect, not a flaw, not a mole, not a vein showing through, nothing. Sable fixed it for him, helped him, made sure he wasn't a blank canvas any more. Sable introduced his own form of perfect contamination, causing the prettiest patterns of purple and green over White's body, causing dark blood in thin trickles to dry in arcane symbols on his skin, staining and crackling and then flaking off.

White loved it. He loved to stand in front of the mirror after Sable had finished with him, marvelling at the beauty he had been given. It made him shiver, sometimes. Sable was an artist, a visionary, and aesthete, just as White was. They were the same, White believed. Kindred spirits, enjoying their shared pleasure, delighting in what they could do to each other. Not just what Sable could do to White. What White could do to Sable as well. White would look every time, to see the gleam in Sable's eyes as he was carving his canvas, breaking and altering his porcelain companion. He would look, to find the dizzy satisfaction shining through Sable's dark eyes, the basic _hunger_ that only the sight of White, his skin slick with sweat and blood, and his grey eyes hazy with lust and desperation and the delicious pain of it all, could conjure. To any ordinary person, it wouldn't be much consolation, but White was odd like that.

Their last meeting had been a number of years ago now, and White's cuts and bruises had long-since healed over. He hadn't really thought about it lately, distracting himself with various recreational drugs, but now he was stone-cold sober, on the deck of a waste ship, and he _was_ thinking about it. In depth. How nice it would be to have the scars renewed, to be spoilt and ruined as he had been the last time. To put it purely and simply, White needed the blood and sweat and sex and violence that only a place like Sable's bedroom could possibly contain, without causing a hunger-crazed mob outside, or an explosion at a nearby nuclear power plant. Actually, it would be quite a nice monument to have a nuclear disaster occur when he was being gloriously broken by Sable. The very thought made White shiver in anticipation.

That was it. He was going to Sable's apartment, and he was going to have their agreement renewed.

He drew a mobile phone from the back pocket of his jeans, so faded they looked almost white, and, brushing aside the viruses he had flooded it with, forced it to function for long enough to call Sable.

"What is it this time, White?" was the slightly less-than-polite answer he received when Sable finally picked up the phone. It had taken five calls- four times White had been faced with Sable's answer machine, but his faith in the fact that Sable was _never_ too busy to speak to him had led to his persevering, and finally being answered.

"I need a place to stay, Sable," White got straight to the point, flicking his cigarette butt to the floor, where it came to rest against the drum full of 'hazardous substance'. He could almost see Sable smirking down the line.

"No, White. You don't _need_ anything. You want to come and see me again. Admit it."

You wouldn't think a cigarette butt could do much damage to a two-inch-thick oil drum, but this one began to corrode through the metal almost immediately. The thing was, the lit end wasn't actually touching the drum. It was the end that had been against White's lips that was causing the damage.

"You know you want me to come and see you again," White put on his most flirtatious voice, his grey eyes innocently wide, as the cigarette began to float in its pool of molten lead. The wall of the drum was now only an inch-and-a-half thick, and rapidly decreasing.

"I never said you didn't. I'm just not letting you into my apartment until you admit that you want to see me."

Now White _could_ see Sable's thin smirk, in his mind's eye. That smirk did things to him that, while not unfamiliar, were new and exhilarating every time they happened.

"I want to do a lot more than just see you, Sable."

The wall of the drum was now an inch thick, and as White's pulse flared and raced, it was dissolving a lot faster, the corrosion now carrying through the molten lead, rather than from the cigarette than had touched White's poison lips.

"Well I'm not sure I'll be able to fit you in. Some of us do have jobs, you know."

White's face became frosty as Sable spoke. The drum was now half an inch thick at its weakest point, the decay speeding up as White became annoyed. He sighed, as the weak point of the drum finally melted, causing a thin drip of a suspiciously black substance to trace a trail on the floor, heading for his feet.

"Fine. I'll just go and find someone else to fix my problem, then."

There was a pause. Sable knew full well that White was serious. On occasion, he had been known to rent himself out to a dominant type- not as much of an artist as Sable, but good enough to make him less… well… white. His abuser would never come away from the experience unharmed- indeed, White had been responsible for the recent rise in STDs- but White himself would leave feeling satisfied. Not quite the same elated wonder that came from being with Sable, but satisfied nonetheless.

Sable cleared his throat awkwardly.

"There'll be no need for that, White. For you and your problem, I can _make_ time."

White smiled, as the black substance pooled around his feet, not daring to actually touch him. Even the most deadly of pollutants feared the touch of Pollution himself. You never knew _what_ it could do to you.

"It's your problem, Sable. You're addicted." He bared perfect white teeth, and let the viruses wrest control of his phone again, cutting off a very piqued Sable, mid-protest.


	2. Addiction

**Author's Notes**: I have no idea when White **actually** came into existence, although I have an inkling it **may** be somewhere around the Industrial Revolution. I do not **know**, though, and as such, all these measures of decades and stuffs may be **way** out. I know when he started work, but who knows when he actually began his ickle Horseperson-y life? If anyone does, talk to me. If you don't, talk to me anyway. Read, and review if you please, for I shall love you all the more. Plus, it will make me feel better about the fact that I **can't** write Aziraphale and Crowley slash. I get too distracted by the shinyness of White and Sable.

It takes a human being fourteen days to die without food. Three days without water. Ten without sleep. All these numbers are neat and compact. You know exactly how long you've got, and you can either use the time to pray, or write your last will and testament. That, or find some way out of the situation. If you really want to be that practical.

There's no time limit for death by malnutrition.

It can take decades of being able to count your ribs before you finally fall face down in the dust and give up. It can take years of having the worms from your drinking water growing inside you before they devour a significant portion of your intestines and you succumb. It can take months of 200 calories a day before it catches up to you.

Now that's craftsmanship.

Every one of those starving children in Africa you see on TV, swollen little bellies, heads too big for their bodies, ribs able to be played like a xylophone; every one of those kids is a work of art. Years of work have gone into those countries, centuries of locusts and heat waves and corrupt governments and bad crop yields. In an office block in America, one thin figure, standing unconcernedly at a sixty-sixth storey window, is responsible for thousands of years of hunger and starvation.

And he calls himself a doctor.

Sable loved America. So many people and so much wealth. So many _fat_ people wishing and hoping and trying just about any method to be thinner. It was a goal that he himself admired. Everybody should strive to become thinner. Everybody should try to be as thin as he was. Failing that, they should at least try to be as thin as White.

White was not on Sable's most-favoured list for the time-being. He wasn't exactly on Sable's hit-list either, not that he was going to be thankful for that at all. It wasn't that Sable didn't find White… interesting, quite the opposite. White was _very_ interesting when he put his mind to it. It was just that he was very impolite when he took his mind _off _it.

Quite simply, it was annoying.

Sable was not in the least bit, as White had put it 'addicted'. It was White who had the mental problems- Sable thought himself quite sane. By Horseperson standards, at least. After all, it was White who couldn't bear to have anything in his presence remain pure and undefiled. Sable at least had some degree of tolerance towards fat things- they were works in progress after all. Other than that, everything around him had to be thin in some way. Preferably black and sleek and shiny as well. That was White's influence showing through again. There were little aspects of White in every part of his life.

He wasn't addicted, dammit! Nor was he obsessed, nor was he any other synonym you could find. It was White who needed Sable, not the other way round. Sable would merely respond to whatever White asked. He didn't need it, didn't dream about White, didn't spend sleepless nights fantasizing about their next encounter. That wasn't to say he didn't enjoy it, and didn't want to do what White asked of him. Quite the contrary, Sable enjoyed it when White would travel halfway around the world just for a few nights in his apartment, being 'coloured', beaten and broken, polluted in a way that he himself could not accomplish.

There had been a time, about thirty years or so ago, that White, under the influence of goodness-only-knows-what, had convinced himself that he didn't need Sable or anyone else to desecrate him, and that he could do it himself. He had slashed his wrists, his arms, his stomach, every part of his body he could reach. That had sated him for about three months, and after that pitiful interlude, White had turned up on Sable's doorstep with a miserable-looking expression and a firm belief in the fact that no one could do it quite as well as Dr. Raven.

Because White, even though he was an artist in his own right, did not have quite the imagination Sable had. He had the perfect degree of appreciation for the mottled bruise-butterflies Sable's hands could create, the right amount of admiration at the appearance of some variety of plague, spreading across his hips and thighs; but he would never have thought to make them himself. Sable supposed that was why White was so impressed at his artwork- because he couldn't have done it himself.

Of course, Sable knew full well that 'colouring' was not the only thing White came to him for. It wasn't just the lasting defilement he was after- it was the transient violation, the feeling of being dirty, or being used. That was what White needed the most. That was what White had always needed. And Sable was only too happy to accede to his wishes, even though he did not have that same deep hunger within his body.

It wasn't that White was inferior. Sable appreciated White's skill at what he did, that was for sure. There had been a number of times when the entire planet had threatened to go to sleep well-fed, and White had stepped in and produced a Chernobyl-style disaster that had safely averted Sable's crisis. Actually, one of those instances _had_ been Chernobyl, but for all the immediate good it did for the famine effort, Sable suspected that White may have just done it for fun, and the two-headed sheep that nobody wanted to eat had simply been an accident. He did have that fondness for things that glowed green and had about fourteen syllables in their names, after all.

White was immature. That was his problem. He'd only been around for a few centuries- he had yet to wise up and stop playing around. Sure, it was nostalgic for Sable to watch the story of the latest over-the-top chemical disaster making headlines, but it also caused him an envious moment or two. How long had it been since famine in Africa had hit the front page? When was the last time it had been brought to the public's attention? 1984? Sable was grateful for all the charity adverts that drew attention to his handiwork, but by and large he was regarded as old news. There were starving children in Africa, and there always would be, so why waste newsprint on it?

It was times like these that Sable liked to go down to a cheap restaurant, and hear some mother chastise her whiny kids and anorexic teenager for not eating their food. It made him feel better that at least _some_ people appreciated the effort he put into his job. Because it did take effort. All those aid workers, continuously striving to undo all his successes over the years. They were truly tireless, and Sable was getting worn out arranging hold-ups to hinder them and keep the starving people starving. There was some beauty in drawing it out, after all. And it saved all the trouble of trying to start a famine somewhere else.

He was sitting in the cheap restaurant he had ended up in, looking absently out of the window, pushing the food he'd been forced to order around on his plate. No one around him could bring themselves to understand why he wasn't eating- they'd all become ravenously hungry all of a sudden. Even the waitress, with an hourglass figure and the longest, skinniest legs since the invention of the gazelle, snuck around to the back room for a large chocolate brownie.

There was a truck collecting a skip across the road from the restaurant, but as the skip was hauled onto the back of it, one of the sides came away, and all the rubbish that had been contained within flooded out onto the road. Sable raised an eyebrow, despite the fact that he had just dropped his coffee in shock. He stood abruptly, paid for his meal with the minimum of conversation, and left the restaurant.

It couldn't be a coincidence.

And, as luck would have it, it wasn't a coincidence. No sooner had Sable exited the swinging double doors of the restaurant than a pale hand had grabbed his arm and pulled him into an alleyway that wasn't flooded with blazing white sunlight. Considering the hand's touch left Sable's suit looking about twenty years worn, it wasn't exactly hard to figure out who it was.

"Primitive, White. I expect better," Sable sighed stiffly as his eyes immediately adjusted to the dark.

"Got your attention, didn't it?" White retorted, his hands on his hips and a smirk on his face.

"Show-off," Sable muttered, glaring contemptuously at White. Then, with a movement so fast that no mortal could have seen it, White found his shoulder blades making painful contact with the bricks behind him, as Sable grabbed a handful of his loose shirt and roughly shoved him against the wall. "You can't impress me, White. Don't try."

Not caring how hard White's head hit the brickwork, Raven Sable moved in for the kill, capturing White's mouth with his own, with a viciousness that could easily leave a bruise. Feeling the dark blood, thick like oil, trickle from the graze on the back of his head into his flawless hair, White's eyes closed, in pain, in bliss, in anticipation. The painting had begun, and this time, it was going to be better than all the other times.

Because this time, Sable wanted it too. Even if he'd never admit it, White could taste it. Sable wanted, badly, to break White, even as much as White needed to be broken. Normally, this desire would only come about in Sable's apartment, with the breaking, but this time, Sable was eager. So eager that he had made the first move.

Every other time, White had stripped, to show Sable the blank canvas he had to work with, and the interlacing scars from previous encounters had shone in the dim light. Then, it had been White who had made the first moves on Sable, only to be rejected- a formality they had observed since the first time. It was only when White was on his back, stretched out on Sable's four-poster, looking deliciously and beautifully lean, that the light had come into Sable's eyes.

This time, it was already there.


	3. Discipline

**Author's Notes**: If you're still reading this, **hi**. If you've given up when you discovered it wasn't the type of PWP you're used to, or found that it was too long to read, then yah boo sucks to you. Because now we're getting to **the good bit**. The things people can get up to in cars with blacked out windows, honestly. Jerry the driver is **mine all mine**, remember, so I am perfectly within my rights to sell him to White as a little slave. But that's last week's news. Read, and review if you'd like. I can always buy Jerry back off White, and give him to **you** instead. ;)

White liked Sable's car. It was sleek, streamlined and shiny, perfectly suited to Sable's obsessive desire to have thin things around him, but it was more than that to White. It was a petrol guzzler, releasing any number of toxic monoxides into the air as it purred along. Acid rain in Greenland tonight.

He liked Sable's driver too. It wasn't the same guy as the last time (Tim Malone, 36, good-looking, who had only recently succumbed to the mysterious blood-poisoning that had plagued him and his baffled doctors since White's last visit)- Sable obviously changed them every few years or so. The man had been trained not to ask questions, but White still appreciated the fact that there had not been so much as a raised eyebrow when Sable had turned up with a long-haired punk, bleeding and bruised and looking generally maltreated, in tow, had followed his companion into the car, and given strict instructions to be taken to the apartment immediately.

White was currently lounging at the opposite side of the car from Sable, arms folded, with a sly smirk on his face. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, following the perfect curve of his jaw, pooling into a large droplet at his chin, poised to fall and stain his shirt.

Sable was watching him. Dark eyes followed the line of White's flawless arms, down to where his shirt rested loosely against his very obviously flat stomach. White noticed him looking, and stretched in a way normally seen only on those of the feline persuasion. His shirt rode up his stomach slightly, and stayed there as he returned to his normal position.

"You've lost weight," Sable observed, after about five minutes of silence.

"I smoke too much not to," White replied. "And speaking of which…"

He began to draw the packet of cigarettes from his pocket, and when he noticed Sable glaring at him, he grinned.

"You're not going to smoke in my car," the businessman said flatly.

"Watch me."

"I am, but I'm not watching you smoke." Before White knew what had happened, Sable had slid across the backseat to within a few inches of him. "I'm also not watching you bleeding all over my car."

White smiled luxuriantly as Sable's fingers tilted his head back, careful not to smudge the line of blood. His thin tongue flicked out, and in an instant, he had licked the trail from White's face, stopping just short of the younger man's mouth. White's lips parted expectantly, but Sable was not in an obliging mood at that moment in time.

He drew back slightly, and bent to whisper in White's ear, as his thin hand slid down White's chest, coming to rest at his belt buckle- oily, blackened metal, artfully shaped into the universal symbol for biochemical hazards.

The packet of cigarettes fell from White's hand.

"Who's addicted, White?"

White didn't answer, couldn't answer, because to answer would be to admit defeat, and White wasn't into the whole 'defeat' thing. Instead, he twisted his head around to nip gently at Sable's ear. And for once, Sable didn't object, didn't try to push White down, didn't immediately try to take, break and abuse him then and there. Maybe this was due to the presence of the driver, but it still lit a fire in White's mind. A small, weak, candle-flame sort of fire, but nevertheless, a fire.

Flames catch quickly in petrol.

"You'll regret that once I get you in my room, White," Sable said dangerously. White's blank eyes regarded him, with all semblance of innocence.

"What else was I supposed to do, darling?" he asked flippantly, as his newly-empty hand slid, barely perceptibly, up to where Sable's still rested against his belt, and lightly nudged it lower.

"You were _supposed_ to answer me. You were supposed to tell me that _you_ are addicted to this," Sable met White's challenging expression with a mirroring one, but White was having trouble keeping his face inscrutable as Sable's tapered fingers began to have an effect on him.

"I'm feeling rebellious. Put me on detention," White smirked, but his sly smile was momentarily shattered, replaced by a split-second look of ecstasy. Sable's answering smirk became vicious.

"I'll make you write lines," he murmured, enjoying the effect that he could feel he was having on White. "You'll write lines in your own blood. I'll make you carve my name into your pretty white skin, and then…"

"Then?" White couldn't help it. That was the fatal mistake, the Achilles' heel in his plan- when Sable was there, he could not control himself. It had never happened with any of the others. There was just something about Sable than made White-pardon the pun- _hungry_ for more of what he was being so graciously given.

His position subtly changed, his body shifting around to be closer to the heat of Sable's, to be fully against the body of his companion, as he needed to be.

"Then I'm going back to the office," Sable continued, abruptly and very suddenly returning to his side of the car, straightening out his suit as he settled back down.

"Sa-_ble_! You _can't_!" White protested.

"Oh, I can. And I will. When you need it the most, White, when it's that final push that will complete you, then, _then_ I am going to leave you. And when I come back, I want no doubt in your mind about who is the addict here."

"Sounds like you have something to prove, Sable," White slinked across the backseat, ending up so close to Sable that he may as well have been sitting in the businessman's lap.

"No, White. You are a disobedient wretch, and any opportunity to discipline you must be taken with both hands."

"I like the sound of that," White shivered, both for theatrical purposes, and because the word 'discipline' from between Sable's thin lips did strange things to him. "Why don't you take one of those opportunities now?"

"With my driver listening to everything we're saying? I do have a reputation to uphold, White."

"He can listen. He can watch, for all I care. He _really_ wants to, Sable. In fact, he'd like to fuck me himself, but he can really see you as the type to do it instead."

It was only by some form of divine intervention that Sable's car did not leave the road at this point.

White shifted around, and lay across the backseat, so that his feet dangled off the seat, and his head was resting in Sable's lap.

"Not a chance, White. I want you to muse on what you can't have."

"And what's that?"

"Me."

White actually had the audacity to look vaguely surprised that Sable could think such a thing.

"But I do have you, Sable. Right here," he smirked, holding up his right hand, little finger extended. Sable reached out with an expression of mingled amusement and contempt, and casually snapped White's finger.

Something in White's mind snapped at that as well.

With a movement more often seen performed by cobras and other snakes of the venomous variety, White reared up, and with the hand that Sable had not just mutilated, dragged Sable's face down to his for a brutal, vicious kiss.

From Sable's point of view, it was like being kissed by a viper. A very strong viper with the ability to keep one in the same place, with toxic, traffic-fume breath that could choke a mortal, not to mention the wicked little sharp teeth tearing away at his mouth.

By the time White released him, Sable was dizzy from the amount of chemicals he'd been inhaling.

White whirled around, his bright hair, now stained with blood and brick-dust, coming to rest over his pale shoulder as he straddled Sable's lap, raising the businessman's hands to the front of his shirt.

"Now, Sable. Here and now," White gasped. A fleeting thought, something along the lines of making White wait, danced behind Sable's eyes, but then the combined effect of White and the chemicals kicked in. Now was good. Now was _very_ good.

He began to kiss savagely at White's neck, and his driver (Jerry Malone, 25, no relation to Tim, worked out, and, unbeknownst to Sable, had a penchant for frequenting gay clubs) blushed at the noises White made in response. The blond arched his back, his hips pressing closer to Sable. White had been harbouring all this desire and tension for a little over half a decade now, since the last time he and Sable had bid a very breathless and lust-fuelled farewell. In the absence of his favourite drugs, it was driving him wild.

And Sable knew it.

With White pressed so closely against him, Sable could very obviously feel that White was hard, even through the heavy-duty skater jeans that his companion was wearing. Despite his best efforts, his own body was responding in kind, giving away what at least his body felt towards White, even if his mind had not followed suit yet.

Under the influence of White, 'yet' was soon to be removed.

As was White's shirt, by the look of things. The pale boy squirmed as Sable's mouth left a smouldering trail of moistness across his scarred chest, in a winding pattern meant to serve as something of a distraction from the fact that Sable's hands were now fervently working at White's belt buckle. Corroded as the metal was, it was still sharp, but Sable did not even feel his fingers sliced open, even though his own dark blood was staining White's faded jeans.

Tetanus schmetanus.

As Sable mentally swore at it, White's belt came undone, lest it face the wrath of the third Horseperson. The thick denim slid down only slightly over White's almost-scar-free hips. Normally, Sable would have dealt with this- would have liked to torment White with it. Now, however, that was not the case. He wanted White stripped, bent over, and willing. Preferably now.

His bloody fingers slipped inside White's jeans, and the boy let out a desperate little noise that Sable recognised from years past. It was a noise of affirmation, that Sable was doing the right thing and should continue to do more of the aforementioned right thing. It was also the noise that had a tendency to drive the last of Sable's sanity away.

Just as 'yet' had dissolved in the toxic chemicals emanating from White, the car stopped, and Jerry (sweating profusely and not actually daring to turn around) announced that they had arrived at the apartment block.

If looks could kill…


	4. Abstract

**Author's Notes**: To all of you who haven't given up, a **very** warm hello again. Yes, I'm **still** talking to you, I'm not going to leave you to read any chapters in peace without my little bit of insanity. This **may **be slipping more and more OOC as I continue writing, but I'm sure it makes for more **enjoyable **reading that way. There is a lot of **stuff **in this chapter that wasn't there in the others, so the warnings now include bad language, BDSM, and the good old standby, **slash** (just about the only thing that **was** there before). The one thing I own in this chapter is Sable's bedroom, which happens to be **my **bedroom. Draw your own conclusions from that, folks, and have a **pleasant **read.

White had not regained any of his sanity by the time he and Sable arrived at the penthouse apartment. On the contrary, he had been tipped slightly further over the edge by the interruption, and the only question that now remained was whether White was going to be patient enough to let Sable go on top this time.

Sable's apartment was, in the best tradition of modern businessman, based on the idea that minimalism was the way to go when it came to interior decorating. The walls were a pale grey, the floor a slightly darker version of the same colour, the rugs and curtains were black, and all the furniture was incredibly dark mahogany. The kitchen was all sleek black lines and chrome planes, and the bathroom, White surmised, was probably worse. What few ornaments adorned the flat surfaces were also in neutral colours, with one notable exception.

There was a large canvas on Sable's bedroom wall, the style of it very reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting, but for the large smudges every now and then, as if made by a body sliding across it. All the smudges and speckles were in varying shades of red, and it hung from a very large, protruding hook a few feet superior in height to White. The area of wall around the hook was deeply scratched, but White's eyes were not on the canvas. As Sable shoved him through the door, his grey gaze fell upon the bed, adorned with Sable's usual minimalist black sheets. He strode across the room, leaving Sable to lock the door behind them. Shamelessly discarding clothing to the floor as he delicately stepped over to the bed, White smirked back at his companion, who was watching appreciatively, leaning against a small desk not far from the door.

"Come on, Sable- it's not nearly as much fun alone," White murmured, every old scar shining in the bright sunlight from the window. His taut muscles rippled as he slid onto the four-poster, leaning around one of the bedposts to look, slightly more petulantly than before, at Sable.

"It's not nearly as fun without the anticipation, White," Sable chastised, as his left hand opened a drawer in the desk he was leaning against. Surreptitiously, he reached inside, and smirked as his fingers met with cold metal.

"I've waited long enough. If you don't hurry up, I'll go and fuck your driver instead," White sighed, leaning back against the post. Sable slipped the contents of the desk drawer into his pocket, unnoticed by White.

The blond appeared to be considering the option of forgetting all about Sable _and_ his driver, as his pale fingertips hovered about the smooth flesh just below his navel.

Attractive as the prospect of watching White bring himself off was, Sable did like to have a degree of involvement every time White was aroused. Also attractive was the option of just plain having sex with White, but to Sable's mind, it seemed as though it was missing something. And that missing something could be reintroduced with the contents of most of the drawers in Sable's room, not least the one he had just transferred to his pocket.

He walked slowly over to the bed, and White lay back luxuriantly, relaxing in the knowledge that now, at last, he was going to get what he wanted.

But not in the way that he thought.

Sable, mere feet away from being able to pounce on the deliciously naked form of White, suddenly changed direction, and with super-human strength pulled White to his feet, using his long white hair as a handhold. White's slender body was slammed against the wall supporting the canvas, and his breath caught as Sable's body pressed against his from behind.

"You really think you're worthy of being fucked in my bed?" Sable muttered against White's ear, his thin hands pinning his prey's wrists to the wall. White could feel Sable against him, hard enough to take White there and then, without bothering with the chore of undressing. White made a needy little noise, and arched his back, pushing harder against Sable, and in doing so brought his wrists slightly closer together.

The businessman didn't waste any time. Quick as a flash, he had brought White's wrists together in front of him, and slipped the contents of his pocket around the thin joints with a small 'click'. Then, he raised White's wrists, and hung them over the hook on the wall.

Handcuffed inescapably against the canvas, White could only vaguely predict what was going to happen next. Sable had always been a sadist, and White knew that whatever was going to be done to him was going to involve a great deal of pain for him.

This, in White's opinion, was fantastic.

He kept his back turned to Sable, partly out of a desire not to ruin the surprise, and partly because it was always more fun for him if Sable couldn't see the ecstatic expression on his face.

He heard the brief 'swish' of Sable's black curtains being closed, and then the movement of a drawer near to the window. Then, he heard the sound that was, of all sounds, the most likely to persuade him that good things did happen to oh-so-very bad people.

It was the crack of a whip.

White had heard of a man, once, who had such skill with a whip that he had been able to land it on another man's skin without causing them any pain whatsoever. He was certain that Sable possessed these skills as well- he just didn't put them to use at all. Sable's objective with a whip was simply to make White bleed as much as possible.

The canvas was Sable's sadistic masterpiece. He fancied himself as something of an artist when it came to abusing White, but after a couple of their earlier encounters, before White had fully taken over Pestilence's job, Sable had grown sick of seeing White look-a-likes on every side (that look had been very in just after the Industrial Revolution), and he had decided that he needed something permanent around, a sort of memento of White. The notch on the bedpost, but with a little more style.

Dark, poisonous-looking blood spurted from White's back as the whip licked across his shoulder blades, tangling with, and indeed tearing out, a few strands of his white hair. A beautiful invasion, as the whip bit again, this time from a different angle. White yelled in pleasure. He could feel Sable's thin smile burning into the back of his neck, even as the whip hit again and again and again.

"Yes, Sable," White hissed, through gritted, but nonetheless grinning, teeth. "Oh, yes, hurt me, make me bleed, please, use me…"

White's knees buckled beneath him, and because of the way the handcuffs were hung across the hook, he swung around, now facing Sable, weak, paler than usual, but exhilarated.

Sable could not hope to deny what this was doing to him. White, naked, pale, perfect, a thin sheen of sweat glazing his porcelain skin as he rested against the canvas painted with centuries' worth of his own blood. Sable's best work of art, guaranteed to win innumerable fetish art prizes, not to mention sending his libido sky-high. He was similarly breathless and sweating as he discarded both the whip, and his jacket, to the floor.

"You're nothing but a dirty slut, White, you know that? A desperate, filthy, fucking whore," he murmured, padding almost silently across the room to White, whose pale eyes were still closed in bliss.

"Sable, Sable… Sable," he gasped, still leaning, weak-kneed, against the canvas, until he felt Sable's crisp shirt brushing against his body, at which he forced himself to stand up straight. Sable leaned an arm against the wall, and his laugh reverberated against White's neck.

"You travel halfway around the world just so I'll beat you, and maybe even deign to fuck you."

"Only for you…" White managed to choke out, Sable's breath on his neck causing what remained of his mind to short-circuit and malfunction in odd ways.

"My perfect little slave…" Sable muttered as he brushed White's tangled, blood-matted hair over one shoulder. White hissed at the word 'perfect', but otherwise gave no response. "You're a work of art, White. My masterpiece," the businessman continued, as his hands began to trace the interlacing scars on White's body, the blood from his slit fingertips mingling with that from White's deep wounds.

"Make me beautiful, Sable. Make me yours," White whispered, as his body twitched beneath Sable's touch. Sable's only response was to draw a short and extremely sharp-looking knife from his belt.

"Lines, White. You owe me lines," he smirked, holding the knife point just against the hollow of White's throat.

"Set me free and I'll write all the lines you want."

Now, if there was one thing Sable _really_ wanted to see, it was White, wielding a knife on himself, carving into his skin whatever words Sable told him to. And so, he took no time in unlocking White's handcuffs, as his other hand still held the knife, not far from White's lips. The blond leaned forward and impulsively licked along the side of the blade, even as Sable twisted it, and it slit White's tongue.

With the taste of blood, White's totally submissive side leapt to the forefront of his mind. He would obey, he would bow to every whim Sable had, he would do anything as long as Sable would continue to hurt him, and would continue to keep the tantalising possibility of being fucked long and hard within White's reach. That was the key to White's very soul.

"Carve my name into your arms, White. I want to see how far you'll go, for me,"

White did not hesitate. He immediately turned to his right, and with several elaborate and twirling slices, the name 'Raven' was elegantly inscribed on his upper arm. He turned to his left, and within a minute, the name 'Sable' was emblazoned on his other arm. He looked up at Sable, seeking approval.

"Beautiful, White. Beautiful. Now, I think maybe I need you to do something else for me."

"Anything," White looked up at him with eyes frighteningly devoid of anything resembling independent thought, as the knife slipped from between his fingers, clattering to the floor.

"I want you on my bed, on your hands and knees, within the next ten seconds, White."

It took White all of four seconds to comply.


	5. Submission

**Author's Notes**: Well, now we've established that I'm **wrong **in the head, and we have weeded out the weak-stomached from among us (and by us I mean about five people on the **entire **internet who will actually want to read this, which used to be seven, but two of them couldn't handle the heat), let's get on with the **show**. White wants what he can't have... or does he? Also, there is blood, and cliché, and **more **nakedness than ever before! I have a complex that thinks anorexically thin men are **really **attractive- rock on Raven Sable! **Please **review, or I'll have no need to post the rest of this up... and then you'll be wondering what could have happened, like, **forever**.

Sable paused only to pick up the knife from where White had dropped it, slowly strolling towards the bed, taking in the beautiful, foundering wreck that was White at that moment in time, with a deep sigh of contentment.

"Look at me, White," he ordered, in a silky-smooth and vaguely threatening voice. White tore his eyes from the inoffensive black sheets beneath him, to raise a half-wild, desperate gaze to Sable's face.

"What do you want, White? Come on, tell me," Sable murmured fluidly, as he tucked the knife back into his belt, and began to remove his shirt, revealing a body so thin, the ribs could be counted.

"Come to bed, Sable… please…" White's hazy gaze slipped back to the sheets, and Sable tutted.

"I want you to watch, White. I want to see your face as you watch me undress."

White's face was a picture. Half-mad with lust and desperation, he winced as he raised his gaze to Sable, fearful of what his new-found insanity might cause him to do. As Sable's shirt (finest silk, made by the best Italian designers, and don't you doubt it) slipped to the floor, a shudder ran through White's body, and he found his pale lips forming words his brain had not permitted.

"I want _you_, Sable. I want you above me, inside of me… I want you to make me scream like the last time… Sable… I can't stand this…" White's back arched, the movement squeezing more blood from the wounds on his back. As he raised his hesitant gaze to Sable's face again, he saw that the other man's expression had become as cold as ice.

"I don't care," he said, in a dreadfully flat tone. White wanted to die, to simply lie back on the black sheets and expire. That would be nicer than to be left here by Sable, as _he_ floated back to the office in a state of extreme satisfaction. The boy's gaze dropped to his hands, spread beneath him, his broken finger sticking out at an odd angle. He had been staring at his abnormally clean fingernails for a good thirty seconds or so, before he felt the bed give slightly next to him, as a knife sang against a belt buckle.

"White…" Sable sighed, in a sing-song voice. "White, my filthy degenerate, are you listening to me?"

"Every word, Sable," White mumbled. Victory march for Dr. Raven, anyone?

"I have some important work to do, you know that."

"Of course."

"That includes the signing of a _very_ important document, and I really can't be late," he said as nonchalantly as possible, and as the knife-point touched White's lower back, his pale companion was very suddenly aflame again, desire bleeding through him. "I'm going to sign you, White. I am going to make sure you never doubt whose property you are. Then I'll give you what you need. I'll ride you until morning if that's what it takes."

"I bet you say that to all the filthy whores," White sighed weakly, then gasped as Sable's knife split the skin at the base of his spine. He could feel the loopy signature burning through him, marking him as Sable's property, even as his companion idly twirled the knife between his fingers.

"You're mine, White."

"Then claim what's yours, Sable!" White groaned exasperatedly, and a shudder ran through his body as Sable cast the knife aside, to where it landed with a dull 'thunk', its point deep in the floor, quivering.

"Patience, White. The wait will make it all the sweeter- you of all people should know that's the way I work."

"Well it's not the way _I_ work, Sable."

"I know. Terrible, isn't it?" Sable purred, swiftly yet silently ridding himself of the last of his garments.

"You are such a bastard."

"And that's why you want me so badly," Sable smirked, draping his thin frame over White's bleeding body. White could feel Sable's flesh on his own. And it _burned_. In the most basic, primal, animalistic way, it burned. As good as the whipping had felt, as good as the signing had been, if you added them together, squared the result, and multiplied it by ten, it would be almost as good as White felt right then. He was burning up, and Sable's hot breath on the back of his neck was not helping. Not helping at all.

"I do… I do… Sable…" White whimpered as his fists clenched on the black sheets.

"How much, White?" Sable ran his hands over White's pale, slender hips, so far untouched by the whip or the knife. "How much do you want _this_?"

White gasped, almost choking on the air around him, as Sable slammed in, without warning. The shock was not painful- quite the opposite- it was electrifying to White. This was how he belonged- bent over, being fucked, being broken, being _used_. It was like the last piece in the jigsaw that was White. And that last piece was Sable.

The businessman leaned over White's twitching body, the blood from his companion's back smearing over his chest like ancient war paint. He grabbed a handful of White's hair, pulling the boy's head back to whisper in his ear.

"How much?"

"So… so much, Sable… I want…" White trailed off. There were a thousand things he wanted just then- most of them involved words like more, faster, and harder, and it was enough for him to allow these to flit around in his head. If he said them aloud there was a good chance he would come, even without the help of Sable.

Sable was loving it. Despite the number of times he had been taken this way, White was still as tight as ever, as desperate as ever, and as incoherent as ever. All friction and heat and cute little noises issuing from his lips as Sable thrust particularly hard, or when White was on the verge of coming. But there was a while to go before Sable would let that happen.

His short but sharp nails dug into White's hips as the blond slipped down onto his elbows and knees, arching his bloody back, pushing harder against Sable, who increased the pace, as White wished. Sable's black hair, normally slicked back, fell about his face, in some places sticking to his forehead. This was the only time he'd ever let himself be seen looking slightly out of the realm of the tidy in front of one of the other Three of Them. Or behind one of the Three, to be exact.

A tearing sound mingled with White's little noises, and Sable's heavy breathing. White's fists had, seemingly of their own accord, clenched on the sheets, tearing the individual fibres apart. His eyes were tight shut as Sable's tapered fingers began to walk a pathway away from White's hips, to an area that would surely step the proceedings up a notch.

White's eyes snapped open.

It was as though he was discovering the feeling for the first time. Every part of his body was acutely sensitive at that moment, but Sable had once again managed to lay his hands on exactly the part of White that was _the_ most sensitive, _the_ most likely to send waves of intense and almost intolerable pleasure through him, just like the waves of static from a badly tuned radio. And every time the wave left, it left him pushing harder against Sable, needing more of his drug of choice.

Of course, this was Sable's plan. It always worked better if White was willing- it was ten times as satisfying that way, if he knew that his companion actually _wanted_ to be used as a whore. As an unapologetic sadist, one of Sable's biggest turn-ons was the pleas of a masochist like White, whether verbal or otherwise. Of course, if was fun if they were unwilling, but that didn't half require _effort_. Sable put too much effort into his job to have enough left over to spice up his sex life as well.

Alternately burning hot and ice cold. Such it felt to White, wracked with ever so wonderful pain and pleasure sending him delirious, causing him to forget the boundary between the two. He felt feverish, as the cold danced in light formations on his skin, in between the burning of Sable's body, and the intoxicating heat of his lover's breath on the back of his neck.

"Mm… White…" Sable murmured, his lips brushing against the wounds on White's shoulder. To White, it felt as though he'd set the area alight, in the best way possible. The toxins in his blood made his heart race, as Sable bit down on his neck, and he let out a strained noise. He was so close, so very close…

But then, somebody changed the rules, and it was over, and Sable had pulled out of him. White gave some serious consideration to the idea of crying, but then decided against it. One never knew what Sable would do when faced with tears. Instead, he settled onto one side, his bleeding back to Sable, ready to calm himself into a deep sleep.

Then the rules changed again.

He felt Sable's hand brushing his damp hair behind his ear, even as the businessman bent to kiss softly at his neck. Not a gesture of love- merely a veiled order for White to turn and face him. An order that White disobeyed.

"Not quite what you wanted, White?" Sable purred, nuzzling into White's neck, even as he wound the boy's hair around his fist, making a shining glove about his knuckles. White sighed, his grey eyes distant and slightly unfocused.

"Everything's fine, Sable. Go away and leave me alone."

In answer, Sable firmly tugged at White's shoulder, so that the pale boy was forced down onto his back, one of Sable's thin and yet surprisingly strong arms stretched over his chest, pinning him to the sheets. White's eyes swung back into focus, slightly alarmed.

"Sable… I've already said…"

"Stay very quiet, White. And very still," Sable's dark eyes flashed dangerously as they met with White's. That voice had to be obeyed, even though the former part of its instructions were soon to be a moot point as Sable clamped his mouth down on White's.

And then to White's neck, and then down his chest and over his stomach, until…

Yes. Until.


	6. Stripped

**Author's Notes:** Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who's reviewed in my absence! Due to your persistance (your opinions do matter!), this story is being continued, as I've finally found the impetus to convert the file to something my laptop will actually consider opening. Anyway, here's the next instalment, and I apologise if you were hoping for something more explicit. Bear with me, the rating's only lower in this chapter; White and Sable's bedroom antics will return, you can count on that. Also, this chapter contains my favourite OC of the moment, Evie Green. I'd love to hear your opinions on her (trust me, this will affect the fic later on), so please read and review!

(o.o)

White awoke to a deathly silence, rather a contrast to the night before. Despite Sable's instructions to be quiet, White had not been able to control the breathless, ecstatic cries that leapt forth from his lips. But then, Sable had not minded in the slightest- he had merely laughed, deep in the back of his throat, making White gasp louder and sharper, and squirm in ways that even the blond himself didn't know he could. But now, there was silence. No dawn chorus dared to sing at Sable's window, it seemed. White wondered briefly how the trick was accomplished, then dismissed it as a whimsical attempt to be rid of natural noise pollution.

He stretched, the abused joints and muscles in his body forced into action that wasn't as painful as it should have been. Damn fast healing. His broken finger was already mended, and that was disappointing in itself. All he had to remind him of the previous night's encounter was the blood congealing on his back, and the ripped, stained, and generally maltreated sheets. Because Sable, as White discovered when he rolled onto his side, was not there any more. Of course. Sable had a steady job. Less 9 to 5 than 24/7, but still, it was a regular employment, with people who knew him and brought him coffee and pieces of paper to read and sign and send on. The last person who tried to give White coffee died of tetanus. Suddenly.

The satin sheets slipped away from White's lithe frame as he arose and stepped delicately through to the bathroom. With a flick of one slender, bruised wrist, the radio sprang into life, and with a twist of the other, the water system rattled into life. Sable didn't like White to touch too many things in his apartment- they tended to disintegrate or decompose in an astonishingly short amount of time.

_Your lips are venomous poison…_

White paused before stepping under the warm spray, and began to laugh. He was still laughing as the warm water ran into the myriad of open wounds on his skin, following the curves of both body and scars in an initially red, but rapidly paling stream. White ran his hands through his hair, still humming along to the radio, and the water gurgled along as it slipped down the drain.

A few months later, a new strain of water-borne disease eliminated half of the population of the city.

He stepped out of the shower, wet with droplets that rolled down his skin, falling off with a small hissing sound, and evaporating before they hit the floor. Where White walked, a little trail of low-to-the-ground fumes followed in his wake. He had walked around the apartment several times before the problem finally hit him. He couldn't find his clothes anywhere.

So that was Sable's plan! White would be confined to the apartment, forced to conform to the mortal rules of wearing clothing. It was effective, the boy had to admit. And it would have worked too, if he had not remembered about Sable's neighbour, Evie.

Evie was blond, in mind as well as in body. She was vapid, unassuming, and loved to talk more than to listen, so White would have no problem convincing her to a) let him in, and b) clothe him. There was only one problem. Evie was convinced that he was in reality female. The first time she had seen him, he had been in worn white jeans that clung to his slim legs, a white denim jacket and matching hat. It had been the hat that had gotten her attention. They had had a brief conversation, during which Sable had gradually grown more and more impatient as White had spun her a tale about being friends with a fashion designer. In the end, the doctor had sighed and addressed White as Bianca, and from then on Evie had always called him Bianca, and had chatted on for ages whenever they met about clothes and shoes and other mindless girly things.

White rather liked her. She was a chain smoker, a heavy drinker, into loud dance music, and drove a gas-guzzling jeep even on journeys a few blocks long. A further advantage was, she had rather eclectic taste in clothing, so White would be sure to find something he could wear to go and surprise Sable, the dressing-gown on the back of the door having already been deemed unsuitable. But it would do for now, if only for crossing the hall and going to speak to Evie.

"Hey Bianca! Raven didn't tell me you was in town!" a chirpy Southern accent greeted him after a few minutes of standing in the hall feeling a little stupid. The door was flung open, to reveal Evie in what White had come to know as her 'layabout' clothes- a big T-shirt and some striped leg warmers. Her platinum blond hair was scraped atop her head, roots showing loud and proud, and the obligatory cigarette hung from her fingers.

"I just got in last night," White replied, affecting his enthusiastic female tone. "Listen, Evie, I need a favour."

"Sure, whatever you want, Bianca. Why don't you come inside?" And in a cloud of nicotine, the door swung open. White stepped inside.

Now White could see why it had taken a while for Evie to come to the door- an argument once again about the tenancy duration of her latest one-night lodger. Evie spent her days and nights frittering away the proceeds of a hard-won divorce settlement on alcohol, men and cheap cigarettes. The irony of it never failed to amuse White.

After one last furious blast from Evie, the balding, fat specimen (a six-shot case at least, White mentally noted) vacated the sagging couch and the door slammed behind him. Evie continued to mutter under her breath after him, then she turned back to White and the wide smile was back on her face.

"Men, huh?" she rolled her eyes, waving her cigarette about.

White nodded sympathetically, waiting as she took a long and calming drag on her cigarette. Blowing smoke all about, she remembered her guest had obviously come for a reason.

"So, this a social visit, Bianca?" she asked hopefully. Nobody came to see Evie for a social visit: the men from the clubs always wanted the obvious, the bailiffs always wanted her valuables and the wives of the men from the clubs more often than not wanted to tear her hair out.

The church people had given up on Evie as a lost cause several years ago.

"I'm afraid not, Evie, but it's sure nice to see you looking well."

In fact, Evie was looking worse than ever, her roots almost as long as the coloured bits of her hair, her teeth and fingers stained with nicotine, and there were dark circles under her eyes that indicated her insomnia had returned. She was extremely skinny, no longer the rounded, healthy girl White had been introduced to, and the bones in her wrists and elbows were protruding. Her legs resembled slightly knobbly twigs, and the fine network of blue veins running through them was clearly visible. The T-shirt that she wore hung off her like a child's smock, making her legs look even thinner against the huge block of fabric which hid her emaciated body.

White thought she looked beautiful, particularly as she launched into a hacking cough that was music to his ears. Once she had recovered, she smiled ruefully at him.

"That asshole certainly didn't think so," she jerked her head fiercely in the direction of the door. "Said I should go see a nutritionist or somethin'."

"Well that's not fair," White moved to embrace her. "He doesn't know a thing, Evie, you believe me."

Evie accepted the hug for as long a time as etiquette would allow, then stepped back, folding her arms across her fragile body.

"So what do you want?" she asked with an off-colour smile.

"I need a favour, Evie. Raven's gone off to work and left me in the apartment, right? See, when I arrived last night my bag got lost in the airport and I only have the clothes I wore yesterday, and they're all messy from travelling. I wanted to go see Raven and surprise him, only I can't in my dirty clothes," White explained, largely in one breath. Evie listened carefully, her face showing only sympathy and pity as she took in White's story, and fell for it hook, line and sinker.

"You poor thing. Borrow anything you want, Bianca honey. When you get your bag back just send Sable back over with whatever you take, okay?"

"Sure, Evie. You're the greatest," White grinned brightly at her, his own perfectly straight, white teeth a stark contrast with her yellow-stained smile. He reached out to lay a hand on her thin shoulder, and she accepted it for a moment before turning to the wardrobe that dominated one side of the apartment. It took her some effort to slide it open, but in the end she managed it, revealing a myriad of colours and patterns for White to admire.

"Take your pick, sugar."


	7. Visit

**Author's Notes:** Hello, devoted fans. You may have noticed there's been a bit of an absence from on my part. If you've been in a coma for two years: I've been away. And now I'm back, to continue with more of the shiny joy that is Antithesis (and other fics, too, of course). Not a lot of action for you in this chapter, I'm afraid, but fear not- more is to come, I promise.

(o.o)

Sable had been busy all day. There had been the usual full in-tray, almost overflowing with papers. Then there had been the rounds of meetings- talks of mergers and acquisitions, and the advertising campaign for the latest product range. He hadn't had lunch, but then, did he ever?

He was enjoying a rare quiet moment with a cup of coffee. Not so much drinking as savouring the fumes in anticipation of drinking. He never did. He'd just savour the fumes and enjoy the aroma, and then the liquid would go cold and would be returned to whence it came- Sable never bothered to find out where. The blinds on his office were drawn, and from the outside, only vague silhouettes could be seen. His chair was turned to face the window, his back to the door.

He was thinking. Partly of work- he couldn't help that, the numbers would creep up on him even when he was drifting off to sleep. Mostly of White, though. It pleased him, in his own way, that White was here. Well, at the apartment, stranded there, forced to wait and pine away until Sable returned. It was another demonstration of control, and Sable was _good_ at those.

He slept better when White was around. It was one of those odd things- a human quirk that Sable had never quite figured out. Most of the time he tossed and turned, the sheets bunching and twisting around him. But with White sleeping next to him, his breathing providing a counterpoint to the hum of the ceiling fan, Sable drifted off with no problems.

He didn't _need_ it, though. He didn't _enjoy_ getting all that sleep and awaking groggy from the sheer depth of it. He liked living on such meagre rations of sleep as he could snatch- it gave his work an edge, sharpened every detail and interaction of the day. Perfect clarity.

As he raised the coffee cup to his lips again, there was a timid knock at the door. He extended a hand from behind the protective shield of his chair, and beckoned. The door opened, bringing with it a brief burst of office noise- chatter, and the rattle of computer keys, and a set of shuffling footsteps.

"Um. Mr Sable, sir?" the voice was even more hesitant than usual. It was a new assistant, Jenny or Joyce or something, who had only been here a couple of weeks, and had yet to learn that nothing upset the boss more than uncertainty.

"Yes, what is it?"

"Um. I think you may have been sent a kissogram, sir."

"Really." It wasn't a question.

"Yes sir. Um. Shall I send her in?"

"I suppose you might as well."

Another set of footsteps came in, quite unlike Jenny-Joyce's shuffling, nervous, sensible shoes. These shoes clicked on the floor, elegantly. They sounded businesslike, but it was a very specific kind of business, one that generally wasn't discussed in public places. They sounded like leather.

Jenny-Joyce left, and the door swung shut. The office noise died.

There were a couple more clicks, slow and deliberate as they crossed the floor. Then they stopped, and Sable heard his papers being pushed aside so someone could take a seat on his desk. His chair was pushed around, and he allowed it to be swung so that he faced this intruder.

It was a mark of his self-control that he didn't cry out in surprise.

White was sat on his desk, facing Sable's chair. One leg was folded underneath his body, the other was pushing Sable's chair around. It wasn't that which shocked Sable, however. It was White's choice of clothes.

The shoes were indeed leather. Not dominatrix-black, thank goodness, but a deep, rich brown. They were cowboy boots, feminized to a ridiculous degree. Cut-away bits and embroidery and all sorts of other ridiculous decorations covered what would have been a perfectly serviceable shoe.

The shoes, Sable could live with. The hot pants, well, he was definitely going to have to take issue with those. And some sort of checked shirt, another masculine item taken by women and abused until it bore very little traces of its past as a garment of function. It was tied up, to show White's navel. There was a hat, as well, but the less said about that the better.

"What on earth are you wearing?" Sable asked. Even if it was a clichéd question, it begged to be asked.

White removed his boot from Sable's chair. "Well," he said, with a smirk. "Given that there were no clothes left in the apartment, I figured you wanted me to come along naked. But there were all these people on the way, and I didn't want them staring, so I had to put something on. I figure I'm close enough to naked to satisfy you."

"Where did you get- oh. Evie."

"Yep. You should pop in and see her sometime, by the way. She's looking _gorgeous_."

There was silence. White hooked the heel of his boot onto the arm of Sable's chair, and hauled himself across the desk until both of his feet were resting on the sides of Sable's chair. He rested his elbows on his knees, and grinned.

"Why did you dress up as a prostitute and invade my office?" Sable asked, his eyes firmly fixed on White's face. Anything to avoid looking at that _outfit_.

"I missed you," White adjusted his hat minutely. "Thought you might appreciate a bit of a break from work. You know, relax, take some time out. You work _far_ too hard."

"Just because you don't work at all, White, does not mean the rest of us can just drop everything in order to fill up your free time."

"Aw, come on," White stood up for a second, balancing precariously on six-inch heels, on the arms of Sable's chair. Then he dropped back into a crouch, his knees pinning Sable's shoulders to the back of the chair. "You know you want to."


	8. Eyes

**Author's Notes:** Okay, I'm going to stop with this 'back from the dead' schtick one day. But for now, humour me: I'm doing a freaking writing degree and unsurprisingly, my lecturers don't really like fanfiction all that much.

(o.o)

"I'm in my office, White. Do you know what that means?" Sable asked, looking White in the eyes. The long-haired boy tilted his head in response.

"Door's locked, Sable. I closed it on my way in." White reached out for Sable's tie, taking it in his hands and pulling the other man forwards, gradually, like a lounge singer. Sable put up a token resistance, but White was certainly presenting an attractive proposition. His thighs were taking up most of Sable's peripheral vision, and something like that is hard to ignore.

"Get your feet off my chair." Sable's voice was suddenly all ice and sharp angles. Taken by surprise, White obeyed, sitting back down on the desk, his legs still spread alluringly. He still had Sable's tie, held between two fingers, almost relinquished. As Sable rose from his chair, shoulders hunched, looking for all the world like his namesake, the length of tie became slack, and looped down to brush against White's wrist.

Sable's face was inches away from White's, dark eyes meeting gray. "And just what do you think you're doing with my tie?"

White's fingers opened automatically, and the tie fell, the end of it resting on the desk between his legs. His eyes were wide in anticipation. He could feel Sable's breath on his lips, and the muscles in his back were trembling just to keep him from closing that small distance.

The door opened, and both men froze in a tableau of guilt.

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir, I thought she'd gone..." Jenny-Joyce stammered, backing out of the door and shutting it firmly behind her. This time, there was an audible click as the door auto-locked.

Sable's lips narrowed as he met White's eyes. "Door's locked?" he said, in a quiet tone that belied the volcanic anger rising within him. That story would be all over the office by the end of the week, and he'd have to fire everyone who had heard the rumour. It was demeaning, having been proven _not_ to be a superior, aloof being with no normal desires. The humiliation of being a base creature after all flicked all the wrong switches with Sable's temper.

"Getting caught's more fun," White replied, with a coy little smile, unaware of the danger signs.. "Shame she didn't walk in about a minute later."

Sable's anger found a channel. Not a large one, just enough to let some of the rage out without the explosion that would otherwise ensue. "And just what is going to happen in one minute, White?"

"I didn't get dressed up so we could have a lunchtime chat, Sable," White said, loosening one of the buttons on his blouse pointedly.

"You overestimate your own attractiveness, White. It's rather pitiful. I've already broken you once this week, why would I need to do it again?"

"Fun," was the simple answer. White shrugged, and with that display of insolence Sable was galvanised into action. He grabbed hold of White's trailing hair and pulled it downwards, so that the boy was forced to lie flat on his back on the desk. His head hit the table with an audible crack, but Sable's concern for White's health was running low at the moment. He leaned over the desk, breathing heavily into White's face, as his hand scrabbled on the desk for something suitable. White needed to be taught a lesson, he needed to be _cut_, and cut right _now_.

The best he could find was a fountain pen, and that didn't seem like an appropriate weapon. Nonetheless, he brought it dangerously close to White's left eye, which remained open and unblinking.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't take one of your pretty eyes out right now," he growled. Expecting a flippant response like 'because I have to walk out of here' or 'pretty? Thanks, Sable', he was thrown a little off-balance by White's answering silence. There was fear in the boy's eyes, but fear edged with the inevitable thrill of facing danger and maybe not even coming out the other side alive. White's pupils were huge, and dark, and Sable could feel him getting hard, straining against those stupid little hotpants.

"Go on," White breathed, so quietly Sable thought he'd imagined it. "Do it."

Sable held the fountain pen there, for a long time, quavering against White's pale skin, whilst the rational man and the irrational beast battled it out inside his head. The rational man knew White would have to walk out of there, and even the Four didn't heal _that _fast. The irrational beast wanted to plunge the sharp pen deep into White's eye and feel the hot juices that would spill all over his hand. The rational man found it all amusingly Freudian.

In one swift movement, he dragged the pen down White's cheek, opening up a ragged red line. Slamming the pen to the desk, he grabbed White by the back of the neck, and drew him in for a savage kiss, biting at the boy's lip in lieu of harming him in a more permanent way. His hands, instead of scrabbling for a new sharp implement, grabbed at the ridiculous denim which only just protected White's decency, or what little there was left of it. White whined, but it was an unsatisfied noise, and Sable could tell the difference.

"You can't bleed all over my office," he panted, frustrated by White's too-small buttons. "So I'm going to fuck you, and then you're going to leave."

"Not what I came for either," White said, and Sable bit down hard on his neck in response, his teeth almost meeting through White's skin. This time, the whine was more like a purr.

"Don't you dare make demands on me, White." Sable moved to whisper in White's ear. "You'll get what you're given."

He wound his fingers into White's ever-convenient long hair, dragging the boy's head to one side in order to gain better purchase on his neck. White pulled against the grip.

Resistance. That was new. It was also a mistake, on White's part. Sable's free fist slammed into White's cheek, causing him to rock back in the direction Sable was pulling his hair. The boy was grinning, but trying to conceal the fact from Sable.

It was well-concealed. Sable tugged his fingers free from White's hair, and hit the boy's face with a quick one-two volley that left him lolling on the desk, dazed. Dropping down to capture him in another deep, invading kiss, Sable finally got a decent hold on White's waistband, and pulled it down without fuss, glad that White had not gone overboard on the indignity by wearing Evie's underwear too. He gripped White's hips, fingers digging in to the soft skin and bruising bone, crushing the boy against him. Reluctantly, he let go, just long enough to get the fly of his trousers down. He didn't even bother to unfasten his belt.

He ran his fingers down White's thighs, savouring the feel of the light coating of sweat rubbing off on his fingertips. Without explanation or preamble, he grabbed the back of White's knees, and pulled the boy's legs up until they could be braced against Sable's chest. The hotpants fell, unregarded, to the floor.

Hands pinning White's arms to the desk, cutting off the blood supply and making his fingers numb, Sable slammed all the way in, in one stroke. White's mouth opened in a silent scream, but he knew better than to make noises that could be heard through the glass. His back arched, and his nails scratched against the desk as he sought for something to claw at.

Last night's encounter had been leisurely compared to this. Sable was fast, and rough, and there was no time or breath left for the dirty talk that usually turned White on so much. He dug his nails into the backs of Sable's hands, which were moving White's hips in the rhythm that was at once far too fast and far too leisurely for what they both wanted.

It turned out to be too much for White. He came quickly, messily, all over the front of Sable's shirt, and as all his muscles tensed, Sable came too, gasping and sweating as he collapsed onto White. His forehead rested on the cool table for a moment, leaving a small puddle of sweat behind, then levered himself up from the desk to go and find a clean shirt.

He turned back to the desk. White lay on the desk, naked from the waist down, his legs only just uncurling from the uncomfortable position he had been forced into. He was sticky, and several beautiful bruises were flowering on his face and neck. His pale eyelashes fluttered over half-closed eyes as his breathing returned to normal.

Sable watched, wishing he could freeze the moment, and revisit it whenever the fancy took him.


	9. Change

**Author's Notes**: The song in this chapter is Poison Ivy by the Rolling Stones, and as such belongs completely to them. Apologies if this chapter is a bit more on the extreme sadism side than any previous ones, I'll try not to be _quite_ so rough with White in the future (not!). Jerry, you'll recall, is all mine, and is today starring in the role of Plot Device. Round of applause for the man everyone. As always, read and review.

(o.o)

White was humming quietly to himself as he gazed out of the window of the limousine. His fingers drummed on the leather upholstery, and his toe tapped against the opposite door.

He'd been sent home, dismissed, like one of Sable's office workers, and that stung. Sable had changed his own clothes, but had sent White packing in this degrading outfit, now made all the worse for its dishevelled state. He was sulking at the world from under his hat, the livid scar still shining on his cheek.

'_You can look but you'd better not touch...'_

White stopped humming a counterpoint to the songs on the radio, and snuck a glance at the chauffeur in the front of the car. He stretched, catlike, and leaned over the back of the front passenger seat.

"Turn it up then, Jerry," he said, sticking a leg through the gap between the two seats and clambering into the front. Eyes focused on the road ahead, Jerry turned the volume dial.

'_Late at night when you are sleeping/Poison ivy comes a creeping all around'_

White crossed his legs and hooked his interlaced hands around the top knee. "So we're going home then?"

"Yep," Jerry said. "Boss's orders."

"Did he happen to mention that you were to take me _directly_ home?" White batted his eyelashes, not ineffectually, and saw Jerry blush.

"I don't rightly remember him saying anything like that," Jerry said, turning a corner that would take him in a slightly different direction to Sable's apartment. White grinned.

"All _right_," he said, with a small triumphant punch at the air. "Come on Jerry, let's go to a bar."

It was a few hours later, and Jerry was well over the legal drink-driving limit. He'd only had a single scotch, but he had had several lungfuls of White, and that petrol-breath was enough to make anyone a little light-headed. He'd parked the car on some miraculous autopilot, and was escorting White, who'd drunk rather more, up to the apartment. All in the line of duty.

White hadn't locked the door, and it swung open as he stumbled towards it, arm outstretched. Jerry caught him before he fell, and White used his weight to yank Jerry inside the door and the momentum to pin him against the wall.

"I'm gonna get in trouble with my boss," Jerry said, in between quick, intense kisses from White.

"I'm not his property," White said, aware even as he said it of the signature scarring his lower back. "Besides, he'll never know. We can be _quick_."

On that last word he unzipped Jerry's trousers, having already untucked his shirt and ran his hands over almost all of the skin beneath it.

"Oh, _Jerry_," he said, slipping his hand inside and evidently liking what he found. He flashed a naughty look up at the man. "You want to do me in Sable's bed?"

Jerry hesitated for a second, then nodded, biting his lip. White took hold of both of his hands and danced him through to the bedroom, tossing him down casually on the bed and pulling off the most integral parts of his own outfit. He scrambled onto the bed, one boot still on, and straddled the poor chauffeur.

"You know what I like?" he asked, grinding his hips against Jerry's, eliciting a grunt from his partner. "I like a _man_ to take control. Know what I mean?"

Jerry nodded, grabbing hold of White's hips and wrestling him down onto the bed. White gave in, although he did wriggle onto his front in order to escape Jerry's overenthusiastic kisses.

"You like this?" Jerry asked, reaching a hand around.

"Just... fuck me, Jerry. Now." White was impatient for the pain, for the humiliation and the shame. He had no time for tender overtures.

Jerry spat clumsily, entered in three frustrating stages, each of which had White pushing against him with a dissatisfied whine.

"Hold me down," White gasped, and Jerry hesitantly rested his hands on White's shoulders, pushing them down. White's face was pushed against the soft pillows, but it was the best he was going to get from a mortal who didn't understand the relativity of pain and injury with regards to immortal personifications like himself.

Jerry began a torturously slow rhythm that had White gritting his teeth, wanting more and wanting it rougher. He hissed between his teeth, and Jerry misinterpreted the sound as pain and slowed even further.

"I thought you were a _man_, Jerry," White taunted, clenching his fists in the sheets.

"Bitch," Jerry spat, and quickened his pace, his muscular hands tightening on the tender skin of White's shoulders.

"Harder." White bit back the moan forming in his throat, and was rewarded as Jerry obeyed, slamming into him roughly, all thought of restraint gone. It was fast and frenzied and violent, so much so that neither of them heard the apartment door open and close.

White looked up as Jerry came, with a long, self-satisfied groan, and saw Sable emerge from the shadows of the hallway, a look like gathering thunderclouds on his face. That look sent a cold shiver through White's whole body, and as he watched through half-lidded eyes at the flaming anger rising in Sable's eyes, he helplessly came, shuddering underneath the sweating Jerry.

"Needless to say, you are fired," Sable said, crossing the room to the dresser and setting his briefcase upon it nonchalantly. Jerry swore under his breath, hung his head and clambered off of White, pulling his clothes to some level of decency. "I'm sure you wouldn't wish to have references provided of your conduct. Get out of my apartment."

White lay back on the sheets, and watched Jerry leave. He blew a forlorn kiss in the chauffeur's direction, and was answered with a glare that, if looks could kill, would have incinerated him there and then. He chuckled, as the apartment door closed with a bang, and looked with hazy eyes at Sable.

"Is it your intention to make me angry?" Sable asked, taking off his tie and folding it on top of the briefcase. "Because allow me to assure you, you have succeeded."

"He's _such_ a nice boy," White giggled. "Most obliging."

Sable paused in the midst of taking his jacket off, and sighed. "You constantly push your luck. Do you honestly not know when to stop?"

"Never stop, Sable, you get stuck in a rut that way. As you are _well_ aware," White added, suicidally. He toyed with a strand of his long hair, studying it so intently in his drunken state that he didn't curl up defensively when the stick came whistling down onto his ribs.

All the breath whooshed out of him in an instant, and he howled in pain, the sound mutating into laughter halfway along. Sable hefted the cane in his hand, a would-be elegant affair that was all black wood and silver decoration at the top.

"What a tacky thing, Sable," White coughed, and braced himself as it came down again, hard, on his right arm.

Incandescent with anger, Sable discarded the cane, and punched White in the mouth, loosening several of his front teeth. He climbed atop White, pinning the boy down with his knees and hitting him repeatedly around the face, sending White dizzy as his head rocked back and forth, back and forth. White could taste blood in his mouth, and closed his eyes, giving himself over to the pain. He was going to be black and blue in the morning, and he was going to look in the mirror and oh, it was going to be _good_.

Eventually, knuckles bloody and hair sticking to his face with sweat, Sable tired of beating White nearly senseless, and grabbed the boy by the hair, lifting him from the bed. White's face was a bloody mess, his eyes ringed with purple and his lip swollen and puffy. Nevertheless, he smiled blissfully at Sable.

"Don't you _ever_ do anything like that without my permission again," Sable whispered in his ear.

"You should have done this to me this afternoon," White lisped in a bubble of blood and spit. Sable allowed him to drop back to the bed and stalked away in disgust.


	10. Dismissal

**Author's Notes**: It's almost over! Much as I could continue writing this into eternity, all good things must come to an end, and as this is a _very _good thing (if I do say so myself, etc.) it must come to an end rather soon, I fear. If you read, do review and I will bask in the glow of your adoration.

(o.o)

Sable hadn't slept in the bed. White had lapsed into unconsciousness and strange, luridly-coloured dreams whilst his exhausted, broken body shut down and rebooted. He cranked a bruised eye open to find himself lying atop the covers, in the same place Sable had left him, sprawled out like a broken doll, naked but for a few scraps of Evie's shirt.

He sat up, and his ribs protested. Sable had never taken it to this sort of extreme before. Limping through to the living room, dragging a leg that was possibly fractured in several places, he found the other Horseman sitting on his pristine black leather couch, dark eyes staring at and through the television. There was a glass of brandy sitting on the coffee table, full.

"Mornin'," White said, brushing his hair over his shoulder.

Sable didn't look up, but made a gesture with his hand that indicated 'downwards'. White thought about sitting on the chair, then after a brief reminiscence of Sable's expression last night, knelt obediently on the floor. He caught a glance of himself in the glassy surface of the coffee table, and his breath caught in his throat. Even with the healing powers he possessed of necessity, he was still a mess. Both of his eyes were ringed with a beautiful, poisonous shade of purple, his lower lip was split in three places, and there were a number of small cuts on his face, where Sable had hit him so hard the skin had come apart. The scar from the pen was still there, as a bright but rapidly fading scar.

He scratched absently at one of the bruises on his forearms, where Sable's knees had held his arms down, rendering him unable to defend himself. Not that he would have, other than as a token resistance, but Sable had wanted to be thorough with his beating.

White knelt there on the carpet for ten minutes, until the pile was imprinted into his shins, and the muscles in his legs had seized up. His hands were folded in his lap, and he picked at his perfect nails.

"May I go?" he asked, eventually, shifting a little, pitching his voice at the perfect level of meekness to stroke Sable's ego.

"No."

Or maybe not that perfect.

Sable kept him there for the sum total of forty minutes, by which time White had cramp in his toes and didn't think he could peel his legs away from the carpet if he tried. His lips were dry, and that made the cuts even more painful as the skin cracked. Sable turned the TV off, raised the glass of brandy to his lips and inhaled, but didn't drink.

"Do you know," he asked, after a moment of almost perfect silence, "to whom you belong?"

White had been wobbling the last tooth in his jaw that hadn't quite stuck back into place, and looked up at Sable with mischief in his eyes.

"You could remind me."

Sable threw the brandy into his face, and White hissed as the alcohol invaded the numerous small cuts on his face. The glass slammed back down onto the coffee table, so hard it almost shattered.

"I don't suppose there is anything I could do to punish you that you wouldn't enjoy," Sable's voice was calm, but his breathing was heavy, and ragged.

White didn't say anything, but swept his tongue over his lips, tasting brandy and blood.

"You will leave my apartment as soon as you are fit to. You won't be allowed in again. The next time we meet will be in our formal capacity."

White's mouth dropped open. "What? You're _dismissing_ me? For good?"

"I am tired of pandering to your whims, White. You've cost me eleven drivers, six maids, four secretaries and three dozen office workers so far. You don't understand orders, you don't understand discipline and obedience, and I am weary of trying to instil these things into you."

"And is it my fault you're not doing it right?" White stood up, faltered as the blood flowed back to his legs, straightened up painfully.

Sable's lips narrowed.

Next door, Evie, not usually prone to attacks of the munchies, made a beeline for her refrigerator.

White spread his hands. "I'm a free spirit, Sable. I can take a lot more than your average mortal, a fact which you seem to have forgotten this time around. I wanted colouring, breaking, but you've lost the knack."

That elicited a similar lack of response.

"So hey, I picked up Jerry, closed my eyes, and thought of you. As if I'd have gone with him otherwise. Give me _some_ credit."

Sable sighed, and covered his eyes with his hand.

"White, you're getting shrill. Go away."

"I will _not_," White's fists clenched at his sides as he struggled to control his breathing. He wasn't going to _cry_, he wasn't that type of person, but the thought that he might never be allowed over this threshold again was like a sucker punch. He'd been expecting more pain, but this was just hollowness and it wasn't the kind of pain he liked.

"If I have to drag you by your hair you will leave my apartment."

"Yes! Go on then! Drag me by the hair! Manhandle me out of the door! Give me some more bruises; you know how much I appreciate a good artistic bruise."

Sable looked up at him, and blinked, his eyes bored and pitiless. "White, that's pathetic. Just leave me in peace."

"I can't!" White tried to keep the words from coming out, but they had a will all of their own. "I need you, Sable."

The words might have had a mind of their own but White had all the control he needed over his body. As soon as he'd got the treacherous sentence out, he spun on his heel and limped with as much dignity as he could manage towards the door.

"I guess I'll see you at the Apocalypse then," he said, supporting his weight on the doorpost. He hesitated, thinking about looking back at Sable and _knowing_ that that would be a bad idea because he didn't think he could control himself enough not to run up and _beg_ on his _knees_ to be beaten, whipped, even just hit one last time.

There was a thudding noise, and White looked up to where a knife was quivering between his second and third fingers, stuck by about three inches into the dark wood.

"Get back in here and on your knees before I change my mind."


	11. Occupied

**Author's Notes:** Remember when I said I wasn't going to hurt White quite so much ever again? I lied. Read and review, o loyal readers.

(o.o)

White knelt, stiffly, not far from where Sable lounged on the couch. His head was bowed, but there was a faint smile on his lips and the words _thank you thank you oh thank you_ were buzzing around his head like a locomotive on a circular track.

"Yesterday," Sable said, quietly, "you forgot something fundamental."

White nodded, and Sable prodded him in the knee with the toe of his shoe, prompting him to speak. "Yes, I did."

"What was the fundamental fact of your existence you forgot?"

"I belong to you," White said, dully, but the adrenaline had already had its running start and the nerves in his body were lighting up, one by one.

"Why, then, did I find you submitting to my chauffeur, in my bed?"

White looked up. This wasn't going to be a formality, as he'd thought. This was going to be an actual interrogation, where he would be expected to answer the questions Sable asked. Oh well. If he wanted answers, then he'd get answers.

"I wanted to make you angry at me," he replied, in a simple, childish tone.

Sable didn't seem surprised. "And why," his voice got quieter still, "did you want to do a foolish thing like that?"

White shivered, and dug his nails into the flesh of his legs, just above his knees. "I wanted you to beat me."

There was silence for a moment.

"Go on," Sable sat forwards on the couch.

"I wanted to feel as though you would kill me if you could. I wanted you to look at me with pure hatred in your eyes." White was staring at a spot on the floor as though it was his only salvation. His shoulders trembled, but he pressed on. "I wanted _wrath_, Sable. I wanted to be broken so completely I'd wish I could die. I wanted you to hit me until you'd exhausted yourself and then you'd hit me one last time and I'd be complete. I'd be a _true_ work of art."

He dared to look up, and saw Sable's tongue run over his lips.

"And do you think," Sable rose from the chair and paced steadily across the room, "that this is a wise thing to want?"

"No," White choked. "But I want it anyway. I can't help myself."

There was a splintering sound, and a few moments later White's shoulders tensed as Sable's knife ran across them, from one arm to the other, splitting the skin in a livid red line that immediately began to drip hot blood down his back.

"That is the wrong answer, White."

"It's the only one I've got," White said, and a second later Sable's hand had wound into the majority of his hair, slung over his shoulder, and was pulling it upwards. White felt his legs unfolding, but couldn't quite get his feet underneath his body enough to push himself up. He could feel his hair splitting, tearing out of his head as Sable held him there, just too high to be comfortable and just too low to allow him to stand up.

"Pain beyond measure and reason. That's what you want, is it?"

White's eyes opened wide and he looked up into Sable's cold eyes with a desperate expression. "Yes!"

Sable hauled on his hair, dragging him over to one side, then he opened his fist, and White crumpled to the floor, his scalp burning. Sable tossed a few loose strands of hair down beside him, followed by the knife.

"I told you to carve my name onto your body when you first arrived," he said. "That apparently wasn't enough. I want you to do it again."

White obeyed, quickly, neatly.

"And again."

Less neatly, but with far more haste.

"Again!"

Sable continued barking the order, until White's torso was a mess of interlocking letters, the name Raven Sable written again and again into his pale flesh, streaking his skin with rivulets of blood. Where he hadn't been able to fit the full name, he had put small, intricate initials. Sable surveyed him in satisfaction.

"Are you ever going to forget to whom you belong?" he asked, taking the knife from White's bloody hand.

"Never," White breathed, drunk on the pain.

"Stand."

White obeyed, on unsteady legs, spilling the pool of blood that had been accumulating between his legs and stomach. Sable darted around as he wobbled there unsteadily, grabbed him from behind, and held him up, with a knife against the hollow of his throat. He turned White in the direction of the hallway mirror.

"Look at you, White." His breath was hot on the skin of White's neck, the only part which had so far escaped laceration. "Look at you."

"Sable," White pushed back, so that their bodies were flush against one another. He could feel Sable getting hard, and it was inspiring a similar effect on himself

Sable's other hand, slippery with blood, clamped over his mouth.

"You're as pretty as a painting, White, don't spoil the effect." The knife shifted a little, so it was digging into White's skin. "My work of art."

He bit down on the soft skin between White's shoulder and neck, eliciting a muffled moan from his companion. He released White's mouth, leaving a smudged red handprint behind that covered White's lips and most of his chin, and ran the flat of the knife down White's chest, dragging open the intricate cuts.

He threw the knife to one side, where it embedded in the carpet, handle up. Raking his nails up White's body, tugging on the open wounds, produced a whole new series of wordless half-screams, that overall sounded quite nice.

"It's going to be impossible to enjoy you fully here," Sable said, and hauled on White's shoulder, dragging him through to the bedroom. He left White standing by the foot of the bed, hands rigidly held by his sides, and turned his back to open the drawer to the dresser.

He heard White's breathing shiver, quicken, and turned back around, catching the boy with his hands on his cock, fervently stroking, watching Sable with hungry eyes. White forced his hands down to his sides again, but it was too late, he'd been caught.

"Oh, White. The devil makes work for idle hands," Sable said, with a cruel smile. "I'm going to have to keep you occupied, aren't I?"

It was the work of less than a minute to tie White down, spread-eagled on the bed, each limb tied to a different bedpost. He was face down, and the friction of the sheets against the cuts on his chest was itching like mad. The friction of the sheets on his groin was just maddening.

"Now," Sable said as he slowly unbuttoned his shirt. "Should I beat you first, or should I just fuck you like the slut you are?"

White's nails dug into his palms. "Whatever you want, Sable. Just... gnh... please..."

"I think," the shirt was discarded and Sable unhooked his belt, "that for trying to take matters into your own hands, you deserve a beating."

"Thank you," White said, then let out a howl as Sable's belt came down on his bare back. The buckle tore through his virgin skin, leaving an angry red mark, dotted with beads of blood. Sable drew the belt back and passed it between his hands, speculatively.

"I like the sound of that," he said, casually. "I want you to thank me for every stroke."

"I will."

The belt came down again, on the back of White's legs, and amidst the cry there was the definite shape of gratitude. Again and again Sable brought the leather down onto White's body, onto his back, his buttocks, his legs, sometimes with the buckle, sometimes with just the leather to cause White's skin to sting.

The buckle was a mess of blood and skin by the time he'd finished, and he cast it aside, taking off the remainder of his clothes. White was bloody all over, a mess of cuts and bruises, breathless and exhausted, and still Sable would allow him no respite. He climbed onto the bed and with a few deft flicks released all but one of the clasps that were holding White in place. He was still tethered, by his left ankle, but now he had the freedom to peel his sticky chest from the sheets and flex the stiff muscles in his arms, that so far had escaped much of the abuse.

Sable rested back on the pillows, half-lying, half-sitting, arms spread out over the black silk. White looked up at him from all fours, as a worshipper would look on the incarnation of a God.

"Now, White, you have had what you want."

This was far from true, but White wasn't about to argue. He licked his dry lips. "Yes," he said, voice hoarse from yelling.

"I should like something from you in return."

White didn't even need to be given the specifics. He crawled a little further up the bed, and bent his head between Sable's skinny legs.

The silken pillows ripped in eight distinct places.


	12. Simple

**Author's Notes**: Penultimate chapter, people! I hope you've enjoyed the show so far, and that you will see fit to read, review and shower me with gifts of the intangible variety, like love, respect, internet-roses and all that jazz.

(o.o)

The wave of hunger had reached four floors below, and several families had set off for the local fast-food place, the gases from their exhaust pipes seeming to hang in the air outside the apartment block. Evie was smoking and eating at the same time, compulsively devouring slice after slice of takeaway pizza. The pizza guy was snoozing in her bed, a young, average-looking 19-year-old whose rumbling stomach was threatening to wake him up.

Sable was hanging onto his self-control by a thread as White licked and teased and generally set to his task with enthusiasm. His fingers had ripped long holes into the expensive pillowcases, and his breathing was threatening to quicken and tip him over the edge. He controlled it. Control. That was what it was all about.

"No more," he said, and to his embarrassment it came out as a breathless whisper. He cleared his throat. "White, no more."

White stopped on command, but couldn't resist curling his tongue around Sable's hot shaft just once more. He drew back, sat on his heels, and looked innocently at Sable, wiping his mouth slowly with his hand, brushing his thumb over his swollen, cut lips.

Sable shook his head like a dog and watched the show for a minute, before he grinned at White. Well, bared his teeth, at least.

"Get over here so I can have you _right now_," he said, and White dropped his erotic act and scrambled to obey. There was an awkward moment of legs and grappling, and then he found himself grabbed by the shoulders, forced onto his back, knees brought up to his chest and then Sable slammed in and everything was suddenly very, very simple. The room turned hot around him, the air smelling very faintly of petrol fumes, and the pounding of his blood in his ears provided the rhythm to keep in time with.

He wrapped his legs around Sable's back, pulling the man closer to him for a kiss. All that soppy romance stuff wasn't usually White's style, but he'd had all the pain he'd craved and needed, and he wanted to express his gratitude without relying on his juddering breath forming half-coherent words. Sable kissed him with passion but continued violently thrusting away, hands holding onto White's hips. He broke the kiss, pushed his body upwards a little and slipped his hand between their bodies, curling his fingers around White's cock, stroking him in nothing like rhythm and struggling to keep his balance with one arm.

Awkward or not, White was _definitely_ enjoying himself.

His back arched, and his hands gripped Sable's shoulders hard enough to bruise, the first time he had been allowed to return pain in almost forty years. His quick breaths became words, one word, repeated over and over again as Sable's rough movements shook his body to the core.

"Sable... Sable... Sable..."

The pathetic, broken sound in his voice tipped Sable over the edge first. He ground his teeth together and his breath stopped for a moment as he came inside White, with a shudder and a grimace. White looked up at Sable's face, contorted and dripping with sweat, and with a muffled whimper, he came over Sable's hand, his eyes closing and his face almost serene.

Sable withdrew, with another shudder and wiped his hand on the sheets. He was still tangled up with White, all limbs and stickiness and not knowing where one person ended and the other began. As he flopped down onto the bed beside White, he took the pale boy with him, enfolded in his arms.

White kissed him, a kiss of gratitude and romance and all the other things he usually hated to express. Sable was at first hesitant, but returned the kiss, pulling White so close that their bodies slid over one another and Sable's sweat dripped into White's open wounds. Sable traced one of the signatures with a finger.

"You're mine, White," he said, pressing at the flourish that had ended the word 'Sable'. White whimpered.

"Yes."

"And only mine?"

"Of course."

"I'm not going to lose another member of staff to your wanton appetite?"

"Not if you do that to me the next time I come to visit you," White laughed, and kissed Sable on the mouth again. There were a few hot, breathy moments before the air in the room cooled, and the pulse pounding in White's ears slowed. He could feel his eyelids getting heavy.

White pressed his forehead to the hollow of Sable's throat, feeling the beat of his lover's heart against his skin, and enjoyed the feeling of warmth and post-coital goodwill, before his eyes gradually slid closed, and he fell asleep to the sound of Sable's soft snores and the incessant ringing of a phone in the other room.

In the middle of the morning, Raven Sable fell asleep with the mysterious boy named White, and missed several hours of valuable work time. His phone rang, in the other room of the apartment, but there was nothing that could have woken him, save perhaps the angel with the trumpet heralding the Apocalypse, and he'd have had prior warning of that long before the first note was sounded.

On the other end of the phone, Jenny-Joyce tapped her foot impatiently, hung up as the phone went to answer and dialled again. Beside her, the delivery man looked down at his clipboard with a worried expression.


	13. Goodbye

When Sable awoke it was dark in the bedroom, the only light coming from the moon outside. He could hear the television, turned down low in the other room, and there was a streak of bluish light along the floor. He climbed from the bed, pulled a dressing gown from the wardrobe, and padded through to the living room.

White was sitting cross-legged on the sofa. He was completely naked, and his rapidly-healing skin gleamed in the light from outside. The picture from the TV was reflected in his eyes, and he didn't seem to be able to tear his eyes away from it.

"Hello, Sable," he said, dreamily, without looking up.

"_...will be the biggest supertanker in the world..."_

Sable sat down next to him, slipped an arm around White's shoulders, icy to the touch. White leaned against him, eyes still staring, unblinking, at the screen.

"Isn't it beautiful, Sable?" White sighed.

"_...up to a hundred and fifty million gallons of oil..."_

"You'll be leaving me shortly, then?" Sable asked, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice. White was too rapt on the picture to notice.

"How could I pass up a crack at _that_?" he said, gesturing towards the hulking ship, sitting in a dock over the other side of the world, in the bright sunlight.

"Obviously you couldn't," Sable said, twisting his head to plant a possessive kiss in White's hair. "Just don't forget that fundamental fact we've been discussing."

White did tear his eyes away from the screen then, and looked up at Sable with a similar expression than that he'd worn looking at the ship. "I belong to you."

"Yes you do."

"So I will have to turn down any hunky sailors who proposition me."

"Yes." Sable's grip on White's shoulder tightened.

"You know, I might be overpowered."

"No."

"I am only a skinny, frail creature."

"No you're not."

"But me versus a big muscly sailor? Sable, how could I resist-"

"Very easily." Sable said, and kissed him.

.

**Author's Notes:** This is something in the nature of an epilogue, just in case the ominous delivery man didn't quite give away that this is the end of the road. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, particularly Sawlt to Your Suger, who is the only reviewer so far to return after my long journey through the Land of the Dead Fanfic Writers. And now, I must bid thee, White and Sable a very fond farewell, and hope that I never spend so long writing another fic again.


End file.
